Lady Dragons shift focus at end of rare losing season

The Southlake Carroll girls basketball program is finishing up the unthinkable on Feb. 7 – the season.

A program rich in postseason tradition finds itself already eliminated from playoff contention for the first time in eight seasons.

But down seasons happen. Sometimes, it’s just a case where the growth of some players didn’t come as far as head coach Teri Morrison had hoped. Plus, Morrison understands there’s elements that she learned.

Carroll (8-19, 1-10 District 5-6A) is now changing the goals. To start, this program would like to finish with double-digit wins. It has to win two of its final three between Hurst L.D. Bell, Lewisville Hebron and Flower Mound to reach it.

“Every year is authentic,” Morrison said. “Now, we know what happens in order to make the playoffs. Now, we have to change our thinking. We have to work smart. I want to see the hunger to still compete at a high level.”

Two of the major issues that faced this team – ball security and shooting – meant the team never found any consistency. Going into Tuesday’s game against L.D. Bell, the Lady Dragons were shooting 37 percent and had a shocking turnovers to assists ratio of more than 2-to-1. Carroll had committed 549 turnovers while it created just 253 assists.

The past two weeks have presented some optimism. The 54 points scored against Northwest Byron Nelson (64-54 loss) marked the first time since Dec. 1 that the Lady Dragons had broken 50 points. They scored 78 against Fort Worth Polytechnic.

“It’s been night and day,” Morrison said. “You never expect a negative record. I never really thought about those teams who have been at or below .500. But now, it’s happened. So the key for us is promoting what we can do toward the end.

“I’ve seen tons of improvement. Our point guard Kayla Colan was great, with eight assists and six steals. She looked like the player I thought she would be.”

Morrison has been always one to promote her breakneck pace of offense and balancing the attack between her posts and guards. Admittedly, she said if she had to do it over again, she probably would have focused on starting a smaller lineup and gradually working her posts into the game.

“We took 59 shots and our defense came up with 16 steals, so those are steps that we are looking for,” Morrison said. “I would have wanted this a lot sooner. We just have find a way to deal with the pressure moments. That’s something we’re going to have to work on during the end and in the offseason.”

Morrison wants to close this season with effort and achieving other goals. It’s about focusing on each quarter and trying to win that or keep a deficit within five or six points.

She will use some pregame video to keep her players invested in these last nine days. There is still more work to do despite the fate of the season being known.

“We’re going to do some different things with the schedule next year,” Morrison said. “I’m going to go for less games and more quality games. This is going to be an offseason audit. There are going to be some things we didn’t do to get to the playoffs.”

This story was originally published February 1, 2017 at 4:16 PM with the headline "Lady Dragons shift focus at end of rare losing season."